Kim Dotcom Tried And Failed To Stop The Attacks On The PlayStation Network And Xbox Live

Kim Dotcom.
Nigel Marple / REUTERS
Kim Dotcom, an internet entrepreneur who became famous after authorities raided his New Zealand mansion in 2012 for running a file-sharing site called MegaUpload, attempted to restore service to Sony and Microsoft's online gaming networks Thursday night — by bargaining with the hacker collective allegedly attacking the networks.

Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live service have been down for over a day. A hacker group called "Lizard Squad" has claimed responsibility for the attack. Lizard Squad is supposedly flooding Sony and Microsoft's servers with bogus traffic in what's called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Kim Dotcom tweeted he'd give members of Lizard Squad a free premium subscription to his new encrypted file-sharing service MegaPrivacy if they agreed to end the DDoS attacks. The tactic worked, but only for a few hours.

Here's how it all went down:

On Thursday night, Dotcom tweeted that he would give a free lifetime premium subscription to MegaPrivacy to members of Lizard Squad if they agreed to stop the attack.